on the topic of failure
by urfriendlyneighborhoodpan
Summary: These humans, they just have a way of surviving.


**A.N. : I haven't written an snk fic in like, I think three years maybe. I don't think I'm gonna get back into it, but I do know that I still love beruani and I wanted to post at least one more fic, now that I feel like my writing's improved. I wanted to spoil them a little.**

 **Lots of spoilers, if you're not up to date on the manga And the anime now, I guess.**

 **But if you're up to date on the manga,** **I hope you enjoy this most. From the bottom of my heart.**

* * *

 _"if our love lasts forever_

 _it's gonna get real awkward_

 _when one of us dies."_

Annie opens her eyes the first time, afterward, with a new perception of the world. Everything, minimized. The sky no longer so far out of reach, the horizon a palpable thing. She sees the things that had once been immeasurable, miniscule against her tiny, child hands. She does not know this yet, but she will forget what it used to be like. That the trees are just trees, and not the gentle rustle against her calves in her big body—the better body, the one that stretches shadows far across the valleys. She will come to crave the feeling, the sensation that she is immovable, insurmountable, immeasurable in that way all things used to be.

Annie breathes and the air tastes different on the way in, a crisp glass of water. The realization that she is not the same. That she will never be the same.

.x.

The boys she is tasked to work with are clumsy, messy things. Tightly knit together by the one thing they really share in common, being boys. It makes for uncomfortable instances, the deeply seated socialization that she is a delicate, feeble thing, and their insistence that she cannot possibly do as they do. It is a process of breaking them down, scraping her knee so to speak and refusing their help for it. Teaching them that she can rise to the occasion, and then surpassing them at their own game. She catches the most fish at the river, she brings them the most game, she breaks the most bones and resurfaces stronger and stronger each time.

It causes some sort of dependency. She, being the youngest and smallest of them, the one they turn to from the tightest corners. She becomes an essential wheel in their intricate network, not just the beacon in the crowd. Annie shifts under the weight and doesn't think to doubt she can handle it.

The loss of one of the boys forces her to individualize the other two, and to understand that she cannot become attached to them as a result. They are expendable, all three of them. And this must be something she can comprehend, it has to be compartmentalized one way or another. This has to be inevitable, this has to happen and this is only the reminder of that.

Reiner becomes withdrawn, for a time. Unwilling to wrap his head around it—and in this way, Annie should have seen it all coming so much sooner. He never mentions anything about anything. There is only the mission, and the will to pull through. If only for the sake of their lost, and all they left behind for it.

Bertholdt, weak and timid and insignificant Bertholdt, cries. Never when he thinks they're listening. It is the dead of night, the embers of their campfire have long since died out, and he is wiping desperately at the tears that will not stop falling. Fumbling, struggling to breathe, unable to bottle it in any longer. He goes silent during the day but this is nothing new, he has always been a quiet thing. He sinks into this for as long as he needs to, and without her noticing cracks himself out of it and slowly, so slowly, begins to speak once more.

Annie isn't sure what to feel. It is a sharp ache in her chest, there is some surplus in their supplies but it almost isn't worth it. More goes to waste with the lack of appetite, there are some nights none of them can sleep—pretending, always pretending not to hear the stifled sniffles Bertholdt makes. One day, it is fresh and incessantly stuck between her teeth; that bit of food she can't tongue out. The next, it's a bad dream she can only run from during the day.

It's something.

.x.

The wall makes it real, and seeing it for the first time sets it all in stone. It would be a two days' walk from this distance, perhaps more with the concentration of activity nearing the wall. They almost don't want to cross it, this last lap of the journey falls entirely on her. This young, they cannot transform so many times in one day. It saps them of their energy, this will be their only chance for the next couple of days. If it doesn't go right the first time, it never will. It is unlikely the inhabitants will not notice them in their failure.

The boys insist she take the bulk of their dinner, and do not wake her until hours later. They will be piggybacking on her from this point on, there will be no safety out in the open. She will sprint this distance, and at that last minute she will call for attention. At this point, it rests on timing.

Annie slits her palm with a knife, and everything shrinks down. The task, made miniscule. The valleys fly out from under her feet, the wall runs at her just as fast as she runs at it. Suddenly, nothing can go wrong. There is no one standing at the top, no one watching for their approach. It is so easy she almost wants to laugh, exhilaration bursting at her middle and propelling her forward. The whole world is open to her, in this moment. It is hard to want to revert, back to the fragile body she's stuck in.

.x.

The story goes, they all three lost their families in the wreckage. It's so easy to act the parts, it's obscene. Annie mentions a father, and that he taught her everything she knows. And that's all she has to say. Everyone knows what loss is now, and it's all the same shade. There is no space for all these people and nowhere else is it more evident than in the orphanage they are forced into. There are a hundred children with the same face and the same story and Annie, and those two boys, and the things they have to fabricate to make themselves out to be tragedies, become insignificant. Nobody asks anymore, and nobody listens if they do.

They become backdrop, a written pattern in which it is only acceptable that they do, indeed, join the ranks.

But it's all about timing. They are still young, impressionable children. They meet on the darkest nights, and sometimes they have to be reminded of their place. Sometimes they find themselves straying. It will be years before they can join, and in this time they must grow stronger. This is so much harder to accomplish when all they have is each other, and the tools they are left with.

Annie alternates. Sometimes she picks fights with complete strangers. Sometimes she swings at Reiner at the drop of a hat and sees where it takes her—and sometimes that doesn't pan out the way she hopes. Sometimes they're pried apart by some dawdling adult and sometimes, Reiner doesn't bend so quick.

Most times, she pins Bertholdt on the ground behind some out of the way shed and punches him until blood pours from his nose like a running faucet. Most times, she refines her skills with the least of them. He is pliant and willing and never puts up a fight. He is clay under her hands, pops his jaw back into place as his wounds mend themselves right before her eyes.

It allows a release of energy, pent up just as they are in this place—surrounded by walls, by all means of the word.

She sighs when it's over, watching the birds stretch their wings out there in the sunlight with unseeing eyes.

.x.

They are naturally alienated, or perhaps they seek it out. Reiner dips in and out of circles without really sticking. He has a gift, remains a shimmering image nobody can quite pin down. He is never entirely a friend, but too close to be an acquaintance. They know he craves the interactions, there is only so much they can all three talk about before they run out of words. Bertholdt sticks to his side but he is never so fluid, never so appealing.

Annie finds him under the shade of some tree, alone, while Reiner plays with the other children in the yard. They are only children, lost in this sea of too much.

Bertholdt follows after them with these shuttered eyes. Thinking. Always thinking.

"Don't feel bad for them," Annie tells him, and allows him to be startled by her presence. Looks down her nose at him and pretends she's not feeling the exact same thing. "They wouldn't feel bad for you."

This conversation has been had before. It has been exhausted. But it still pries open the same parts of him, still picks at his scabs and bleeds him dry. He shuts his eyes and looks defeated and Annie feels bad. She does.

But he cannot afford to know that. There is too much sitting on them both to allow doubt into this space.

.x.

She is thirteen, he is fourteen, and they have become she and he and Reiner.

And Reiner has become this separate entity, the anchor they shouldn't cling to but the reason they can integrate in this way. Brilliant, where they are lackluster. They blend into the walls—backdrop, backdrop, as they should be—and Reiner does anything but.

And she's lonely, that much is for certain. There's a weight inside of her she cannot pinpoint, and it makes it hard to get up in the morning. She has to hold her tongue until the next chance she gets to talk to him, and it is never for a long enough time.

There is so much to say, but not much to say, and he understands this better than most.

It all boils down to the only thing they have in common, being children.

.x.

The boys shoot up, and she remains mostly the same. Things fill in but this is mostly inconsequential, mostly a hindrance in the way she moves. Reiner has to build and build and build, and he is able to do so. And Bertholdt—it's like he'll never stop growing.

The training corps _changes_ things, so suddenly. Finally, the ability to stretch and redefine themselves. Finally, set back on track.

And finally, too close to heart.

Reiner becomes popular, it is impossible to get a word in. And Bertholdt has never more looked like a shadow, trailing behind him unacknowledged.

Annie isolates herself, and this is the only thing they can relate to.

Annie knows, and Bertholdt knows, that to get attached is not an option. There is no room inside of them for anything more than the other, and this mission, and the fact that this is all going to end in one way. Sometimes they meet eyes from across the way and it's clear what they're both thinking.

This isn't going to go to plan.

.x.

They'll be stuck here two years and it's a drowning thing, unraveling at the base in such a way it's overwhelming. And there are only so many things they can do to pass the time, only so many times they can revise the mission until it becomes repetitive. And it becomes repetitive.

She is only paired with Bertholdt every so often, but it's therapeutic when she is. Nobody takes a punch like he does, and the first time he snaps back she isn't surprised to find it runs both ways. It is never enough, yet it does what it has to. She slides her knuckle back into place with a hiss and he spits out a line of blood; this is it, the thing she's been seeking.

A release valve.

There isn't much to say. He knows where she comes from, he knows the things that plague her, he has seen it with his own two eyes and he has, it could be argued, perceived it worse than she. There's a glass wall between _she_ and _them_ , and he still hears the whispered prayers in the middle of the night begging, _begging_ that he—the he they saw that day, the he that ruined their lives—would meet a fate much worse than death. He has looked remorse right in the eye, and has not looked away.

Annie breathes, shakily, and decides he has her beat.

.x.

Reiner becomes the butt of a joke they don't laugh at, a two-faced caricature they watch from a safe distance with an impending sense of doom. Because he will be their doom, and they cannot abandon him.

Annie calls it necessity. Bertholdt is more honest than that.

Here is the truth of it. Nobody can completely understand you without seeing the worst parts of you, and nobody can completely understand you without accepting them for what they are. Annie wakes more and more often in a cold sweat the longer she spends, trapped here with these people and their stories and their tragedies and the strength they have wrought from the flames. The burn in their eyes, and the way they yearn for their piece of vengeance.

How many pieces can Annie split herself into? How many times must she be torn apart to appease them?

How long before she regains peace of mind?

.x.

It only happens once, and they can't convince themselves it hadn't.

Night cloaks them with some false sense of security, and there in the pool of shadow underneath the trees they decide to steal just this one moment for themselves.

Annie tears at his hair and Bertholdt is malleable, his mouth soft and open against hers. He allows her into him without protest, as if she has a right to be there. And so she fills in the spaces of him, crushes herself to him so close there is room for no more. It is a strange thrill to be able to overcome someone so big, so burdened with the weight of all the things they could not and still don't understand yet.

It won't be long before they do, and when they come out of it they will not be the same people they were before it.

But for now, they are here, in this moment. Two, wounded in much the same way. Refusing to become soft and loving, but wholly soft and loving—denying themselves who they are because they were told to. Because they thought they were supposed to. Because they were too young to know any better.

Annie is sixteen, Bertholdt is seventeen, and Reiner has abandoned them. The world has abandoned them.

They are not yet so affected by loss to comprehend this, they have not seen the threads attaching them to these people—light will not reflect off them until it is too late; dawn opening up its mouth over the tops of the wall and bouncing off the corpses they'd tripped on the way there.

Bertholdt moans, maybe from the drag of her nails across his scalp or maybe from the slide of her tongue, on the roof of his mouth. She doesn't know. She will never know.

This is the first and last time they will ever do this, and they both know this. But maybe not for the reasons they think. Maybe not because they won, or they lost, or something kind of in the middle.

Annie kisses and kisses and kisses him under the canopy of black leaves, this on the darkest of nights. It is easy to pour herself into him. He is so very reliable, timid and insignificant and not at all weak. She doesn't stop until they run out of air, gasping frantically with nowhere left to go. They are still too young to really consider the alternative; it is there, prevalent. The boiling want at the pits of their stomach, the excitement rising up to meet them through the dark. Easy to fall into, but far too scary to.

There is too much hanging on them. There is so much they still have to do.

And so Annie extracts herself from him. Doesn't dare steal another kiss goodbye.

.x.

Bertholdt never says it, but she isn't stupid. The look in his eyes in those fleeting moments they have left together is more than enough. She feels something rear up inside of her and she cannot bring herself to look any longer; it's like, she thinks, witnessing a freak accident. It's hard to look away, but even harder to watch.

There is nothing good in forming attachments. If Annie leaves this world in any way at all, it will be alone. Untethered to anything.

Annie buries the memory of his lips, and how he whispered her name as she retreated. She did it because she wanted to, but she doesn't take the blame.

She knows he will never confront her about it, and of course she takes refuge in this.

.x.

Eren throws a wrench in absolutely everything, the catalyst needed for the collapse. Suddenly, they are no longer just the glass image of humanity's demise, hidden under fog by mass fear. They are murderers, must pretend the deaths of the other soldiers do not bother them while pretending they do. A confusion of feelings kept knotted tight against them, twisted and unnatural and so very perfectly human.

Annie doesn't want to kill that boy. She cries and begs and begs over his begging, tangled up in _please_ and _no_ and _please, please be quiet_. She can't see straight and Reiner, Reiner keeps shouting over her. Reiner keeps sounding a lot like she's supposed to sound, and god she thought he was the best of them, once. She thought he was the normal one.

Now the butt of a joke no one dares laugh at.

The sobbing, hysterical, cuts off. It is abrupt and final and Annie, Annie isn't crying anymore.

She isn't sure she has anything left to give.

.x.

Eren ruins everything, but this feels like a cowardly thought. Pinning the blame on the first thing that comes to mind.

Annie has woven a mask of apathy and she cannot make eye contact with anyone. These people are tenacious, surviving the worst of horrors and coming out stronger. Rising from the ashes like some ugly phoenix, and Annie cannot bear to look at them.

She is afraid to know just how weak she really is. She is afraid to see her own reflection.

.x.

She doesn't say goodbye to either of them. Reiner goes over the plan again and Annie doesn't speak. She feels herself grow cold, avoiding their glances.

Reiner draws away as if he _knows_ , and if _he_ knows they must have been too obvious. Something, something must have slipped up. The drift of her gaze as she caught sight of his tongue against his lips, or the sweat dribbling down his brown skin. How he lingers on her a moment too long in the crowd.

Annie doesn't say goodbye. She takes in his mumblings and pretends she isn't shriveling up inside.

"I'm sorry, Annie," he says, voice rumbling deep and gentle. Shaking her down to the core. "I'm sorry you'll be alone."

Annie gets it. She gets that if he had the choice he would be coming with her, and maybe only partly because that was the plan. And she gets that if things hadn't shifted so far out of place, and that if _Reiner_ hadn't shifted so far out of place, he wouldn't have dared leave her behind. This is what responsibility looks like.

This is what guilt looks like.

"It's fine," she says, setting this aside for later. "I'll be fine."

.x.

Defeat doesn't wear right on her, she sits on the forest floor in the better body—immovable, insurmountable, immeasurable—sinking into the realization that they were never going to win. These humans, they just have a way of surviving. She should've known this, they all should've known this.

She used to be one of them, after all.

.x.

It doesn't take very long from there. She never has the chance to regroup with the boys because they had never counted on failure, children that they are. She is too far deep into the walls to reach them in time, and while she spent so long refusing their help—scraped knee, gone untended—her first instinct is to shout their names. Suddenly, it all comes back to this.

Her heart is pounding and it had never seriously occurred to her to abandon the mission, and she wonders why it never had. They have taken her for all her strength and bested her with something much better, much more efficient.

She makes the mistake of meeting one of their eyes, and it's the last of many. They are cold and unfeeling and very much like phoenix—turned stone, turned onyx.

She is felled like this, not at the success in their capture but their success in reminding her that she is no better than they. Reduced to instinct, entirely human.

The last resort, and all the while she steeps in her regret not saying goodbye.

Not stealing one last moment.

.x.

Annie closes her eyes for the last time, and does not doubt those boys will come back for her. She will allow herself to believe in them.

It is all she has left.

.x.

 _"(we have buried the putrid corpse of liberty.)"_

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 **A.N.** **: The quote is from "A Softer World."**


End file.
